A dynamic robot design team at Canada’s McGill University uses Altium technology to quickly develop a modular electrical system for their autonomous competition robot.
"Even though Protel is very powerful, it has an easy learning curve. We completed our first prototypes in 2 to 3 days – we couldn’t have done this with any other software."
- Jad Naous
Team Mantis leader
McGill University
Considered one of the leading universities in Canada, McGill University, located in Montreal, Quebec, is well-known for its advanced postgraduate research in a range of disciplines. Embracing this culture of innovation, undergraduate engineering students at McGill have formed a cooperative student team with expertise in mechanical, electrical and computer areas to take on the Robot Systems Challenge hosted by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). The SAE Robot Challenge is an annual competition that gives students the opportunity to enhance their knowledge and skills in all fields of engineering related to robotics by setting a range of challenges to be completed by student-constructed robots. The undergraduate student team from McGill, called Team Mantis, used Altium technology to create the complete electrical and electronic sub-systems for their robot entry.
Key challenges
Preparing for the SAE Robot Challenge was mainly an extracurricular activity for the members of Team Mantis, which introduced both time and organizational obstacles for the team during the development process. These difficulties came to a head when it became apparent that the rules for the 2005 competition had radically changed from those in previous years – the entry was no longer required to be a walking robot, and both the difficulty and number of robot challenge tasks had been substantially increased. For Team Mantis, this setback demanded that the mechanical and electrical design of their robot needed to be completely redesigned, and in record time. This placed high demands on the expertise of the team members, as well as the engineering systems and software used for the project.
Meeting the challenges
To meet the challenges imposed by the electrical redesign of their robot, Team Mantis needed a professional-level electronic design system that offered advanced board layout features, but a ‘shallow’ learning curve so it could be efficiently used by all electronics engineering members of the team. After finding that both Eagle and OrCAD® design software fell short of these requirements, team leader Jad Naous tried Altium Designer’s Protel® license design system based on recommendations from other engineering students at McGill. According to Jad, Protel’s intuitive user interface, ease-of-learning, high level of schematic-to-PCB design integration, plus powerful design and routing features made it the ideal solution for Team Mantis.
The results
Using Altium Designer’s Protel license, the electrical and computer engineering members of the team successfully developed the electronic sub-systems for the Team Mantis robot based on a unique modular approach, which allows for a more flexible robot design matched with a high level of design redundancy. All PCBs in the robot are based on a PIC microcontroller-equipped ‘base board’ that accepts sub-module boards to specialize its task – plug in a motor module and the board becomes a ‘smart’ motor controller that communicates with the other boards via the robot’s Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) bus.
Although the students in Team Mantis had little experience in electronic design software, they were able to use Altium Designer's Protel effectively after a short learning period, leading to a very fast development of the robot’s electrical systems. Along with Protel’s short learning curve, the students benefited from the efficiency of the system’s seamless schematic-to-PCB integration, smart routing features and powerful rules-driven design environment. The limiting factor in the ongoing progress of the Team Mantis robot has now become the mechanical, rather than electrical, system design.
About the university
McGill University, located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, is an international university comprising of 21 faculties and professional schools that offer over 300 programs in the undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels.
McGill University is a publicly-funded, research-intensive university. Founded in 1821, it is considered to be one of the best universities in the country, particularly for its undergraduate education, and has one of the highest entry standards in Canada. McGill's faculty is outstanding, and each year, over 100 new professors and researchers join the university bringing new knowledge, ideas and energy to build on its strengths and history.
Led by 4th year computer engineering student Jad Naous, Team Mantis is a group of McGill undergraduate engineering students committed to tackling the annual SAE Robot Systems Challenge. The student team members designed, programmed and constructed their robot electrical subsystem using Altium’s Protel design system.
Altium Designer’s Protel license, which provides a complete board-level design solution, provided Team Mantis at McGill University with all the capabilities they needed to take their designs from concept to completion.
For more information about McGill University and Team Mantis, visit www.mcgill.ca and www.mantis.mcgill.ca